Reviews of Lots of Things

Feels like ages since I made post. Just been busy and cold. It's hard to type when you can barely feel your hands. Anyway, so stuff I've been watching lately.

1. Toy Story 3 – Guys, guys, if you're on the fence about seeing it, jump off and run straight towards a movie theatre. It is the best of the three and a worthy way to end what has go to be one of the greatest movie trilogies ever. It's funny and dark and heartbreaking and just...it got to me in ways I didn't think movies could any more, completely overriding that cynical voice in my brain that says 'this is a family film' and leaving me on the edge of my seat, especially in one scene which I shall not name, but if you've seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's just brilliant.

2. The Crow Road. It's a BBC miniseries from 1996 about a young man, Prentice, charged by his Grandmother to investigate the disappearance of his uncle Rory seven years earlier (Rory's played by Peter Capaldi, if your wondering as to why I tracked this down). And it's a wonderful four hours of telly. There's a fantastic script and an all-round great cast giving brilliant performances. It's got this wonderful ethereal feeling and there's a mystery within a mystery and flashbacks within flashbacks and somehow it all flows wonderfully. And it's about faith and cynicism (I think best optimised by Prentice's father who is a hardcore atheist but who firmly believes ) and family. And I really recommend it.

Oh, and Peter Capaldi's hair is EPIC. I'm talking having gone straight past James May and started encroaching on Brian May levels of epic. It has to be seen to be believed.

3. Little Dorrit. It'd been meaning to watch this for ages because I loved the Bleak House adaptation the BBC did a few years back and figure this would be just as good. Sadly, it wasn't. It was good, it just wasn't as good, mainly because the plot was far more wandering and not as tight as Bleak House's (that may be an issue with the source material though, and not the production). And while the cast was good, no one stood out as amazing like Gillian Anderson did as Lady Deadlock in BH.

Although, it does have an incredibly high 'hey, it's X from Doctor Who' quotient, with Rory, Martha, Gwen, Midshipman Frame, Bracewell and Magpie of Magpie's electronic all showing up at some point or another, providing it's own form of entertainment.

4. Finally, for the past few months I've been watching Lewis, although I've been a bit loathe to admit this as I have spent years mocking my best friend for enjoying Midsommer Murders which is of a similar vein. Anyway, so basic plot is Inspector Morse's sidekick now has his own show and his own sidekick in the form of Mr Billie Piper, Laurence Fox, and they solve murders in the land of Oxfordshire where it is always summer, academia is the world's most dangerous profession and even murderers are pleasant people. I just love it because it feels like a throwback to the days when TV cops did have to have a dark past or a weird tick and before it became a competition to see which boundaries could be pushed the furthest. So there's no CSI-ing, no beating up suspects, no bending the law to achieve results. It's just a good, old fashioned mystery series.

Biggest crime though is how dreadfully underutilised Rebecca Front is as the resident chief superintendent. She basically shows up three time an episode and tells the boys off. I hate it when TV shows decide to put a woman in a position of power and then proceed to give her no role besides nagging boss who is more-often-than-not wrong. And I think Rebecca Front is fantastic. Use her more, show.

Lewis is incredibly good material for the 'where have I seen that actor before' game. There are a few episodes in which Rebecca Front shows up for more than three scenes in later seasons (i.e. she gets to go to crime scenes), but she is still underutilised. The Corner at least has her part expanded upon. There's a fifth season going into production and I'm hoping that with Rebecca Front having become a bit more famous thanks to TTOI and the BAFTA win, they'll give her a bit more to do.

1) I made it as far as the beginning credits with the home videos of little Any set to You've Got a Friend in Me before I started to sob. And then the third act happened. Whereupon, between sobs, I was like IT'S GOING TO BE OKAY, RIGHT? THINK OF MY SOUL THE CHILDREN!

3) Aw, I loved that one. It's not quite Cranford of David Copperfield (the one with Daniel Radcliffe) levels of greatest costume drama evaaaaaar, but it was so great. Matthew Macfadyen is apparently one of those actors who is epic fabulous in everything (and is thus causing me to toy with watching that Keira Knightley version of P&P, which I don't doubt I'll regret), Andy Serkis continues to be the freakiest thing about every project he's in, and OH GOD, I LOVED FANNY. I LOVED HER SO MUCH. And it continued the tradition, following that of my preferred versions of David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, of Dickens adaptations a better ending than the writer did himself.

The third act, OH MY GOD. Talk about ratcheting the tension up to 11. 'They wouldn't do that to the kids' was like my mantra to get me through, and even then I believed they would go through with it. It looked so hopeless.

Ah, see, I've seen the Keira Knightly version of P&P and unfortunately hold it against him, despite him being wonderful in In My Father's Den and knowing that it's blatantly unfair not liking him just because he's not Colin Firth. I completely agree about Fanny being excellent. I could do with a whole spin-off series about Fanny and her mother-in-law, it would be fantastic.

Agh, I need to read Dickens. I always start his books and then never finish and end up beating myself up about it. *Flails*